


Hair (Warrior)

by b4dw0lfgirl



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, BAMF Ginny Weasley, Battle of Hogwarts, Canon Compliant, Gen, Ginny Weasley needs to be protected, Hogwarts, Post-War, Second War with Voldemort, Tom Riddle's Diary, im low-key in love with ginny weasley, oh wait she can do that herself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-16
Updated: 2016-06-16
Packaged: 2018-07-15 11:39:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7220866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/b4dw0lfgirl/pseuds/b4dw0lfgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ginny can't stand her hair anymore.</p><p>-</p><p>Two snapshots into Ginny's life: one where she is running away from who she was, and one where she is embracing it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hair (Warrior)

Eleven-year-old Ginny Weasley glared at her reflection in the mirror. Her straight red hair was long past her waist. She had been growing it out since long before she could remember. Her mother braided it and it took a very long time to brush in the morning.

Tom had always said that he liked the thought of her with long hair. Sometimes she would come to with the end of her ponytail dipped in red paint, or a stray chicken feather tangled in.

Ginny hated her long hair.

She was not the same girl who had picked up the diary at the beginning of the year. That girl had loved her hair. So had Tom Riddle.

She grabbed the pair of rusty scissors she had snuck from the kitchen and held it up to her shoulders. And she cut seventeen and a half inches of her hair off.

(No one said anything the next morning at breakfast. Ginny was thankful for that.)

 

~*~

 

A lot can change in four and a half years.

Ginny’s childhood crush had fallen in love with her, and she had fallen in love with him. Not in the way she had loved him when she was ten, when he was just a symbol, but with his stupid, self-sacrificial, heroism, and his awkwardness, and the way he always tried to flatten his hair (with no success).  


Dumbledore died, and the school was taken under the control of Death Eaters. Her brother, the man she loved, and one of her best friends had left the school to fight from the outside. God, she hoped they were okay. Luna never came back from Christmas Break. Ginny was alone, as alone as she’d ever been.  


But Ginny was a warrior. She fought the Carrows with as much gusto as she dared, without endangering her family. With every whip lash, every cruticas curse, she thought of Harry, of Ron, of Hermione, of Luna, of Percy, of everyone she had lost. There were many words to describe Ginny (reckless, hot-headed, alone, damaged), but none were as fitting as warrior.  


Ginny stood in her bathroom, thinking of the day, four and a half years ago, that she cut her hair. She had cut her hair to distance herself from what she was, what she had been, done, seen, and what she had not remembered.  


But this time, when Ginny gripped her wand, she did it because she was a warrior. She did it as a reminder of who she had been in the past sixteen years.  


She closed her eyes and cut her hair.  


It turned out uneven, but it was feather-light and pieces fanned out from Ginny’s head, making it look like her scalp was on fire. Now her hair matched the fire in her eyes.


End file.
